Click on the image and notice that ants have discovered the tulip poplar flower. These ants are not thought of as pollinators just clever at finding sweets. Based on my Atlanta backyard observations and record keeping, I found this year's first Tulip Popular flower windfall right on time (day 97) - see my table below.  I'm curious how my first tulip poplar windfall observations correlate with other spring surrogates?  The National Phenology Network leaf out model is another way to determine if spring is early, on time, or late. Spring Leaf Index Anomaly Map uses the first leaf out ..read more

For me, collecting swarms or attracting swarms to bait hives is the most exciting part of my beekeeping.  Possibly making spring my favorite beekeeping season.     Sunday at 1PM I received a text from the MABA "swarm commander" - a homeowner has called the swarm hotline about a swarm in their yard.   The best part of the text details...the swarm address is 3 miles away and the swarm is just a foot or two above the ground.  I'm all in and arrive in the next half hour.   I strongly relate to E.O. Wilson's connection to nature as not outgrowing his childhood ..read more

I sent these backyard photos to a few computer vision tools with results ranging from wrong to interesting.  I also asked questions using a conversational search engine about the size of male mason bees.   iPhone Visual Look Up is for identifying all objects (food, objects and living things too) in photos and videos on the iPhone.  For these photos Visual Look Up produced wrong or slightly wrong answers - Western Honey Bee and Osmia Rufa. iNaturalist is for recording observations of individual living things, particularly things that can be tied to a species name.  iNat u ..read more

Year after year, this tree has produced great bee photos foraging on winter-flowering cherry tree.   The time was 2 PM, the temperature was 57°F (13.9°C), blue sky, sunshine, and a loud buzz of bees on this quiet street. What's next?  Crabapple trees (thanks to Trees Atlanta) are beginning to leaf-out and those flowers will be here soon and attracting honey bees too ..read more

I discovered 2 interesting articles by Derek Mitchell (PhD Candidate in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Leeds), one is intended for a general honey bee audience, the other a hard-core engineering-science article.  This blog post contains 2 images from those articles. Honeybees cluster together when it’s cold – but we’ve been completely wrong about why Honeybee cluster—not insulation but stressful heat sink   Facts about bees wintering in thin-wall wood hives: bees move from the hive edges towards the center of the hive to form a cluster as temperatures fall, the c ..read more

If you turn to page 116 of Seeley's book The Lives of Bees, you'll find a reference to Derick Mitchell a PhD Candidate in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Leeds.   With web-based searching, I discovered Derick's 2017 article in the American Bee Journal (Vol. 157 No. 8) Honey Bee Engineering: Top Ventilation And Top Entrances.   The article illustrates that adding top ventilation significantly reduces humidity and the depth of the heat pool when compared to an uninsulated hive.  Why?  Warmer air is more buoyant and flows faster through the top vent. Prov ..read more

On December 24, 2022, Atlanta experienced a historic single digit 8°F (-13.3°C) minimal temperature.  This cold snap turned green ground cover brown and likely pushed small hive beetles (SHB) deeper into hives and compost piles.  My bee yard has high shade, good soil moisture, and summer soil temperatures for SHB reproduction.  I used biological control, Beneficial nematodes (Heterorhabditis Indica), to treat the soil for SHB larvae.   At dusk, I watered the liquid nematode suspension onto the soil.  Direct sunlight (UV light) is fatal to nematodes. It's one th ..read more

I switched to a round slow cooker (crock pot) to clean the crushed honeycomb and this led me to simplify my crushed comb cleaning steps using a colander. crushed honeycomb - link for bee yard and kitchen activities after several days of straining, I rinsed the crushed comb in warm water selected a colander of the same diameter as the round slow cooker lid line colander with cotton fabric and I mounded with rinsed crushed comb  added lid and joined cotton fabric edges with 2 bull clips removed the colander and added 1 cup of water and lid to the slow cooker be safe and melt the wax o ..read more

I'm not a fan of leaving the counting board beneath the screen.  However, for spring swarms I usually start with the board and remove it when entering warmer weather.   Budgeting time between my day job, gardening, dog walking, going to physical therapy, blah blah blah - Well, I left the board in place without inspection for too long - 77 days, what was I thinking?   I tugged on the corrugated plastic sheet without success.   I shared my why do I keep making my life difficult story with a friend, Michael Willis, who had a great idea - attach a strip of duct tape alo ..read more

On Friday, May 12th 2:00 PM - active scouting at one swarm trap, zero scouting at other traps  3:00 PM - very active scouting at one swarm trap, zero scouting at other traps 6:24 PM - air is thick with bees 6:48 PM - the majority of bees settled on the outside of the swarm trap and began to move in 8:23 PM - bees reversed and are on the outside of the trap On Saturday, May 13th setup 8-frame deep box near the swarm trap; in the last photo, check out the homemade rectangular UV-reactive blue 8-frame entrance add a queen excluder beneath the deep box spray the bees with sugar water car ..read more